


A Soul For (Two Halves Of) A Soul

by luoup (ravenic)



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe – Canon Divergence, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Endgame, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Platonic BlackHawk, Platonic Relationships, Soul Stone (Marvel), Vormir
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:54:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23452795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenic/pseuds/luoup
Summary: Vormir.  Sacrifices must be made.But Clint and Natasha have been through a lot, and neither is willing to let the other die.Maybe there's a way out for them both after all.
Relationships: Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov
Comments: 1
Kudos: 24





	A Soul For (Two Halves Of) A Soul

**Author's Note:**

> it took me just a couple of days after watching endgame to come up with an at-least-slightly-feasible fix-it for the events that happened on vormir. i’m pretty pleased with it, if i do say so myself. i hope you all like it too. natasha deserved better. 
> 
> this is written with the mentality of platonic blackhawk. even before laura (who i have mixed feelings about although i have grown to like her), i really just feel it as a platonic relationship in the end. also, with no overtly romantic intents ever actually being portrayed between the two (clint is married, and natasha was shown overall more “romantically” with hulk or cap), i don’t think i’ve ever watched a scene with so much emotional connection between a male and female character that wasn’t either romantic or blood-family. it made me love it even as i cried. they literally fought each other to be the one to die. she was wearing the arrow necklace. he was the one who guided her out of the red room. she got him out of loki’s mind control. he named his son after her. they took opposing sides in the civil war and had honestly no hard feelings about it. when he was ronin, she called for him and he came. i could write essays about this. i probably will (i already have). 
> 
> anyway. i loved endgame but i _really_ needed to fix this.

They fought for it. Fought for the chance to die, because that would mean that the other would get another chance to live. Fought because that’s what they’d always done – fought each other, fought the world, fought everything the universe threw at them. 

They needed the Soul Stone. Every single stone had to come back to the Avengers Headquarters at a very specific time, or it would all be for naught. None of the Stones were easy to get, but this one required a little something more. 

A life. 

Technically, “a soul for a soul,” but whoever’s soul it was wouldn’t be coming back. One of them wouldn’t be coming back, after all. If they succeeded, the half-of-all-life that had been eradicated would return, but not them. Not him – or not her. 

Only one of them would get a happy ending, now. 

And one of them would be gone forever, like dust. 

It was going to be Clint. Natasha had fought so hard for so long, escaped the brainwashing of the Red Room, dug her way out of the deepest darkness. He hadn’t rescued her, not really – she could do it all along, he’d just been motivation at the right place and right time. After the Snap, he’d lost his mind, gone on a rampage, hunting down everyone he thought hadn’t deserved to remain. But she had stayed true, kept working, held the tatters of the team together with sheer determination, dragged them on through the dust with raw willpower. She had gotten them to the point where they might actually be able to reverse the Snap and undo this hell. That alone would wipe out any red she still believed she carried (she hadn’t carried any red besides her hair in a long time. Clint knew that, even if she didn’t.). She deserved to live, to find happiness. 

It was going to be Natasha. Clint had a family, once, and he would again after this was all over. She had had a purpose even in the Red Room, and still had one – albeit a little different – with SHIELD and then the Avengers. He’d been nothing, a ghost, a ronin, for so long. He’d built himself up from ashes, over and over, had made himself what he wanted to be. He’d never needed someone to follow, only someone to stand by his side. His brother, Coulson, her – they’d all fallen one by one, but the Avengers could do that now. They could stand beside him, watch his back. She trusted them to do that. She trusted him to make it, to endure, to survive like he always had. He deserved to live, to be with Laura and Cooper and Lila and Nate. They deserved to have a husband, a father. Natasha had taken enough lives. She wouldn’t take this one too. 

So they fought. As the being that had once been called Schmidt watched in silence, Hawkeye and Black Widow fought. But they’d known each other too long, were too familiar with each other’s minds and bodies and hearts. Every one of his blows, she countered. Every one of her feints, he caught. He knew to stay away from the force of her legs, and she knew to avoid his powerful hands. So they rolled and kicked and punched and writhed, pushing one another back and forth as they fought to reach the cliffside. 

To obtain the Soul Stone, the creature that had once been named the Red Skull knew, one must sacrifice a life. A soul for a soul. This was unusual, though. Sacrifices fought, certainly. Once they understood what was going to happen to them, they fought like animals, desperate to escape. But this…

Suffice to say, sacrifices rarely fought for the chance to be sacrificed. 

Clint knocked Natasha back hard, finally escaping her grasp, and turned and bolted. No time to think about it. One of them needed to make it out of here, and he was determined for it to be her. In a flat race she was faster, but he had just a touch more agility, plus a half-second’s head start and she was off-balance from the shove. So she didn’t beat him to the edge, and he ran and just kept running, leaping out like he would grow wings, the Hawk taking flight at last. 

He didn’t fly. 

He fell. 

Right up until something caught him. Natasha had thrown herself over the edge with him, snaring him with a wire and leaving him dangling like bait, taking the dive on her own. But he caught her too, and she knew she couldn’t get out of his archer’s hands. 

_“Let go.”_

_“Never.”_

He couldn’t get back up the cliffside. She couldn’t get out of his raptor’s grip. This was limbo, and only the sky knew how long they hung there, both of them feeling like the prey they’d never been. 

_“Please.”_ Neither knew who said it. Maybe both. 

It didn’t matter. The stones of Vormir were sharp and jagged, and the Widow’s wire was not made to hold two people like aerial acrobats for long. He couldn’t let go, and she couldn’t make herself make him. 

So physics made the choice instead. 

Hawks dive, when they hunt. When they spot prey, they fold their wings and fall like stones, snapping out at the last moment to catch whatever they were after. Some spiders drop onto their prey, snaring it in webs or legs before creeping back up, prize neatly wrapped and envenomated. 

Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff do not fall like hawks or spiders. They just fall, like humans. He _is_ human, fully and completely, and whatever super-soldier serum they gave her in the Red Room did not grant her wings or flight or gravity repulsion. 

So they fall. 

This is not a circus drop, with a rope or a wire or a partner to catch you at the last second. This is not a parachute leap with salvation in a bundle at your back, waiting for a sharp pull and then freedom. Every fall has an end. Theirs comes hard and fast and made of stone. 

They are holding hands when they land. 

*

*

Blue eyes opened to a dull orange sky. He was lying in shallow water, not quite floating. It was the kind of temperature you almost couldn’t feel, like it was just heavy air and your clothes dragged strangely. 

This was not Earth. _A sacrifice must be made_ , and he was here, so –

There was something in his hand. 

Clint sat up so fast his back cracked. Almost everything in this world was orange, but his eyes instantly fastened on the red. 

Not blood – red like a fox, white at the ends. The tip of the braid dripped water down her side. Cloud-green eyes stared back at him, wide, all her barriers down as she struggled as hard as he did to understand. 

Between them, their hands were clasped like a business deal, like a blood bond. There was something hard pressed between their palms. 

They drew their hands apart slowly, almost reluctantly, and then both stared at what Clint held delicate as an egg. Resting in the hollow of his palm was a stone the color of a topaz, of wildflower honey, of this world’s sky seen through thick glass. But it was none of these. This was not a stone – it was _the_ Stone. The Soul Stone. 

_A soul for a soul._ And yet they were both here, alive and whole. Neither had really been sure how much of a soul they had left after the lives they’d led, but surely either would have been enough for this fatal bargain. 

And yet. Hawk and Widow sat and stared at one another, temperatureless water dripping down her nose and from his eyelashes. When she flung herself at him, he caught her, held her close. Two hearts beat against each other, pressed against one another, whole together. Still alive, despite the Stone he held pressed against her spine. 

There was no way to measure time here. Eventually, they separated – though never going more than arm’s reach from the other. It was time to return to their world, to their present. Maybe this was some kind of miracle, or a blessing from a god neither of them knew. Maybe the universe had decided that she had suffered enough, or that his luck should finally turn. Maybe it was just a glitch in the rules. Whatever it was that had led to this moment, both were going back to the others, alive and together. They didn’t care how. They could keep going, now as they always had, with the other by their side. 

Vormir shone darkly in the emptiness of space like a black star, an evil omen. An empty coffin, now. Two had arrived and two departed, despite the Red Skull’s words. There would be no more ghosts added here today. 

Time spun. Together Hawkeye and the Black Widow returned to the Avengers, the Soul Stone held between their clasped hands. They were in the endgame, now. This war would be won, no matter what they had to do – and they could do anything, together. 

**Author's Note:**

> and then dr strange is like waitaminute you're both missing parts of your souls??? how are you alive???? and they're like nah we've always been like that it's fine. 
> 
> i just. i miss nat. endgame was very good but i'm still not over it. so i had Feelings and then rewrote the entire scene. 
> 
> thanks for reading!


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